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Title: Assistant Professor of English, Department of English & Modern Languages, Anderson University (Indiana)
Tenured: No
Age: 32
Education: B.A., English Writing — DePauw University; MA, Ministry — Wesley Seminary, Indiana Wesleyan University; MFA, Creative Writing (Poetry) — Butler University
Career mentors: Prof. Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Indiana University – Indianapolis; Prof. Alessandra Lynch, Butler University; Dr. Joshua Bennett — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty: “Teach your students to be human as you teach them everything else.”
Thomas Kneeland went to college with his mind set on becoming a physician. He ended up studying English and becoming a full-time poet. The dramatic change in career focus came about when a classmate ended their life during Kneeland’s first year of college. Kneeland wanted to be able to comfort his friends in the wake of the tragedy.
“And it was at that moment I had a shift in the things that I care about,” recalls Kneeland. Despite the shift, Kneeland’s concern was still – much like a physician’s – on helping people heal.
“I wanted to be able to use writing, use poetry to touch people’s souls in a different way than a doctor would, going from the physical to the metaphysical,” Kneeland says. “Poetry can help shape the metaphysical world that we also live in, how we interpret that world around us and how it reflects on how we interact with each other on a more human level.”
Since becoming a poet, Kneeland has devoted his career to using literature to advocate for a more just society. He now holds a tenure-track position as a professor of English at Anderson University, a small private and Christian nonprofit institution in Anderson, Indiana.
“This impetus to use literature to advocate for social equality extends to his academic agenda,” observes Dr. Brandan Grayson, a professor of Spanish and chair of English and Modern Languages at Anderson University. “Alongside classroom lessons that often tackle this issue, Mr. Kneeland maintains an active schedule participating in panels and workshops that challenge others to consider social justice.”
Kneeland got one of his earliest tastes of poetry attending public schools in Greenville, Mississippi, where he was raised by his Baptist preacher grandfather and a grandmother who served as the family educator and disciplinarian. A sixth-grade teacher taught the poems of Robert Frost. A seventh-grade teacher introduced Kneeland and his classmates to Invictus, an 1875 poem about perseverance by British author William Ernest Henley that has come to hold special meaning for Black fraternities in the U.S.
“So, I’ve got poetry through the lens of a Black Greek organization, and then that grew,” Kneeland recalls. Much of Kneeland’s poetry is on various “coming of age” experiences. One of his most notable works is a 2023 book of poems, titled We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep. “That takes a look at how people of color, or historically marginalized people, occupy space and preserve spaces in which they occupy, against the backdrop of American society,” Kneeland explains.
“So, in that, there’s a lot of spirituality, references to Middle Passage, there’s a musicality,” he says.
Kneeland rejects the notion that poetry is unimportant to society.
“If I think about all the writers and poets who have come before me, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, they are the voices that led movements decades ago, not too far gone from where we are right now,” Kneeland says. “And I think it’s because of their radical writings that we have a lot of advancement in society.”
Ironically, Kneeland spoke with Diverse on the same day as the passing of renowned poet Nikki Giovanni. Kneeland recounts a surreal experience he had afterward.
“The morning after the great Nikki Giovanni transitioned from this realm to the next, I sat down at my desk to write a poem, and I felt her tap me on the shoulder just as I closed my eyes to type the first word,” Kneeland wrote in a post-interview note to Diverse. “In that moment, she had become the ‘bolt of fire’ she once spoke of in her poem ‘Fascination’ — from the collection, Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day — and in that moment, my body poured out words in a way that isn’t mine.
“There is something to be said about what our ancestors leave behind when they take their final breaths,” Kneeland continued. “Nikki Giovanni’s ever-felt presence is a reminder that we still have work to do in this realm for the sake of our humanity, our liberties, our children and, of course,
for poetry.”